A Decade of Black Genius

Take a look at this selection of African-American MacArthur fellows from 1999 to present whose creativity and innovation helped them nab the award.

• 

  1 of 15

  Danielle Allen

  IAS.edu

  A classicist and political theorist, Danielle Allen, was only 29 when she became a MacArthur Fellow in 2002. She holds doctorates from Cambridge University and Harvard. In 2007, she became the only African American on the faculty of the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. Before that, she spent 10 years at the University of Chicago, where she became the dean of the humanities division.

  CAPTIONS BY AFI-ODELIA SCRUGGS

• 

  2 of 15

  Fred Wilson

  WM.edu

  An installation artist from New York, Fred Wilson, became a fellow in 1999. He uses museum design techniques, as well as articles from museum collections, to create installations that challenge accepted points of view. His other honors include representing the United States at the Venice Biennale in 2003 and receiving the 2009 Cheek Medal for outstanding presentation of art.

• 

  3 of 15

  Tommie Lindsey

  George Nikitin/sfgate.com

  Tommie Lindsey had been teaching in Union City, Calif., for 29 years when he became a fellow in 2004. He uses forensics-the practice of public speaking and debate-to empower at-risk students. By 2004, his students had won six consecutive awards from the Speech Association. Lindsey said winning the award was "like getting a phone call from God." He told reporters he would use the money to send his children to college, buy a car for his son and take a vacation.

• 

  4 of 15

  Majora Carter

  Majora Carter's determination to "make her community more livable, greener and healthier than it is today," landed her a MacArthur fellowship in 2005. She was drawn into a battle over construction of a facility that would have processed 40 percent of New York City's garbage. Her success in fighting the plan, and in establishing the first waterfront park in the South Bronx in more than 60 years, eventually led to the founding of Sustainable South Bronx, an organization dedicated to the greening of the Hunts Point community. In 2008, Carter left the organization to form The Majora Carter Group, an environmental consulting firm.

• 

  5 of 15

  John A. Rich

  Drexel.edu

  John A. Rich's belief that urban violence in the African-American community is a public health issue seems more relevant and urgent today than it did when he became a fellow in 2006. Rich chairs the Department of Health Management and Policy at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He has established the Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice, which offers support and services for patients who have undergone trauma from violence. He founded the Young Men's Health Clinic, a primary-care clinic at the Boston Medical Health Center.

• 

  6 of 15

  Jennifer Richeson

  Joe Mehling/Dartmouth.edu

  Jennifer Richeson examines the effects of stereotyping and racial prejudice on thoughts, feelings and behaviors. She was named a fellow in 2006 for taking the lead "in highlighting and analyzing major challenges facing all races in America and the continuing role played by prejudice and stereotyping in our lives," according to the MacArthur Foundation. Richeson is the director of graduate studies and a professor of social psychology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. She graduated from Brown University and received an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard.

• 

  7 of 15

  Regina Carter

  Scott Gries/Emigrant Savings Bank/Getty Images

  Regina Carter has taken the violin from the orchestra to the center of the jazz world. In 2006, the MacArthur Foundation applauded performances that "highlight the often overlooked potential of the jazz violin for its lyric, melodic and percussive potential." Her musical journey has taken her to Genoa, Italy, where she became the first jazz musician and the first African American to play a violin owned by composer Niccolò Paganini. Carter, a native of Detroit, studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, and graduated from Oakland University in Rochester, Mich.

• 

  8 of 15

  Angela Johnson

  clevelandartsprize.org

  A children's book author from Kent, Ohio, Angela Johnson personifies the prolific writer. By the time she became a MacArthur Fellow in 2003, she'd written and published at leasta book a year. Her output ranges from picture books to novels for young adults. She's best known for her ability to explore sensitive topics-racism, mental illnesses, death and divorce-in a compassionate, realistic manner. Johnson has won four Coretta Scott King book awards for her novels and picture books.

• 

  9 of 15

  Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson

  Westernreservepublicmedia.org

  Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson of Columbus, Ohio, said she never had "any doubt in her mind about being an artist." By the time she was named a fellow in 2004, she was well into a lifetime of creativity; she first displayed her art in 1948, when she was 8 years old. Robinson has made thousands of pieces: cloth paintings, quilts, book illustrations, drawings. Among her media is "hogmaw," a mixture of clay, twigs, mud, lime and grease which she learned how to make from her father.

• 

  10 of 15

  Eve Troutt Powell

  upenn.edu

  Eve Troutt Powell was writing a grant proposal when she learned she'd become a MacArthur Fellow in 2003. Troutt Powell, now an associate professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, explores the history of race and African slavery in the Nile Valley. She spent 10 years teaching at the University of Georgia. She received her B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard.

• 

  11 of 15

  Patricia Williams

  Patricia Williams was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2000 for creating "... a new form of legal writing and scholarship that integrates personal narrative, critical and literary theory, traditional legal doctrine, and empirical and sociological research." As a proponent of critical race theory, Williams used those literary techniques to probe the relationship between law and race in her book, The Alchemy of Race and Rights. Ms. Magazine has called the book, published in 1991, a "feminist classic of the last 20 years." Williams is the James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia University. She got a B.A. from Wellesley University, and a J.D. from Harvard.

• 

  12 of 15

  Will Allen

  GrowingPower.org

  Will Allen has helped pioneer agricultural and educational techniques that have taken the phrase "urban farm" from an oxymoron to a model for sustainable agriculture. In 2008, the MacArthur Foundation noted his down-and-dirty efforts to bring healthy food to Milwaukee's inner city. The son of a sharecropper, Allen graduated from the University of Miami in 1971. After a stint in professional basketball, he worked in corporate marketing.

• 

  13 of 15

  Regina Benjamin

  TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

  Regina Benjamin's most recent achievement was becoming the nominee for United States Surgeon General. But in 2008, the MacArthur Foundation honored her for founding the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Care Clinic in Bayou La Batre, Ala. The clinic is the major source of health care for the impoverished village on the state's Gulf Coast. Benjamin rebuilt the clinic three times: after Hurricanes George and Katrina, and once again after a fire. She has an MD from the University of Alabama, and an MBA from Tulane University.

• 

  14 of 15

  Edward P. Jones

  Edwardpjones.com

  Edward P. Jones' first novel, The Known World trolled a hidden corner of antebellum history: the lives of free, slaveholding blacks. Jones, who lives in Washington, D.C., became a MacArthur Fellow in 2004, a year after the novel was published. "Edward P. Jones is a fiction writer who renders in story a mysterious incongruity of the human experience-how faith, dignity and love often survive, and sometimes thrive, in the face of systemic adversity ... [He] works painstakingly to compose artful, morally complicated fiction that challenges, provokes and enriches," the foundation said. Jones graduated from Holy Cross College, in Worcester, Mass.

• 

  15 of 15

  Mary Jackson

  ArtsJournal.com

  Mary Jackson, of South Carolina, maintains and builds upon a tradition that her Gullah ancestors brought from Africa. Jackson has transformed the sweetgrass basket, turning utilitarian containers into "finely detailed, sculptural forms," the foundation said when she was named a fellow in 2008. Jackson's sculptures have been exhibited in numerous museums, including the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Museum of African American History in Detroit.